Numbers

Numbers don't distinguish between entities. Consider 5 - apples, houses, cars etc. What is in a number that I can have 5 items of anything? Or what property is common to an apple, house, car, box etc. that there can be something the same, irrespective of which of these items it is? This has to be something cognitive. Firstly, this has to be about boundaries of entities. Boundaries is where sameness ends and difference begins. It is on the basis of this sameness existing (till a boundary, after which difference begins) that we are able to call anything, a thing, in the first place! This is the cognitive meaning of a ‘THING’. This concept has extended metaphorically to abstract things like class, strength, Math, cricket etc. wherein the sameness is in some or the other regard (than physical appearance). So the world is made up of only “same” and “different”. ‘Sameness or Difference’ is the only distinction that can exist between any 2 things in the world.